The present invention relates to a service means to provide a service to a user of a first terminal of a telecommunication network, to a method realized by such a service means and to a telecommunication network including such a service means.
In order to provide an indication of the background art which can be regarded as useful for understanding the invention reference is made to the document European Telecommunication Standards Institute Standard:
TR 22.70 V3.0.0 (1998-03) entitled xe2x80x9cUniversal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS); Service Aspects; Virtual Home Environment (VHE) (UMTS 22.70 version 3.0.0).
This document describes the Virtual Home Environment concept and its constituent parts of a Universal Mobile Telecommunication System. A concept called service environment is introduced to describe how virtual home environment services will be made available on demand to a user traveling with its terminal in any location. The concept of virtual home terminal is discussed in order to describe how a virtual home environment can be made available in any terminal. A virtual home environment is defined as a system concept for personalized service portability, across network boundaries and between terminals. The concept of the virtual home environment is such that universal personal telecommunication system UMTS users are consistently presented with the same personalized features in whatever network and whatever terminal, wherever the user may be located. The exact configuration available to a user at any instant will be dependent upon the capabilities of the user service identity module, called hereafter USIM, terminal equipment and network currently being used or on the subscription restriction. Such a USIM is a unique personal identification of a user to a subscriber and a service provider. A user with its USIM in another terminal, receives maximum capability provided depending on the limitation of the terminal.
A virtual home environment is created by a combination of the capabilities located in the service provider, network operators and the terminal equipment. In effect, the virtual home environment of a user is considered as a distributed user profile. The profile outline is owned by the service provider, and it is distributed between the terminal equipment, personal identification card, network operator and service provider. This means that to the service provider, the virtual home environment appears as a list of capabilities, preferences and settings appropriate to the user and its subscriber. It is also described in the above cited document that a commercial relationship is required between a service provider and a network operator, either directly or indirectly.
The components involved in realization of a virtual home environment of a user are the following: one user, one service provider, one or more value added service providers i.e. content providers of services such as video on demand or entertainment information provider, one USIM i.e. unique personal identification of the user, one IC card, one subscriber, one subscription of the subscriber to the above mentioned service provider, one or more terminals, one or more network operators.
A user is associated with one service provider and the service provider provides virtual home environment according to the subscription. The service provider can use a plurality of network operators in order to support the virtual home environment for the user.
Individual users have a virtual home environment which is based on a subset of the total services. Whilst the user may have a set of services he would expect to be offered, these are only offered if permitted by the subscriber and the service provider. From the user""s point of view, the use of the network is hidden.
Compared to existing telecommunication networks such as a mobile telecommunication network GSM, a Universal Mobile Telecommunication System UMTS provides more advanced access capabilities such as e.g. higher available bandwidth, higher Quality Of Service and QOS negotiations. This provides known service providers and network operators more capabilities to offer services to its users. Indeed, existing services of e.g. a GSM network could be presented in a more user friendly way by e.g. representing the existing services with icons and, furthermore, advanced services will be offered by exploiting the advanced UMTS access capabilities.
Currently, a telecommunication network such as GSM network provides with the existing access antenna""s a global coverage whilst the introduction of UMTS i.e. the third generation of mobile systems, only provides a very limited so called island coverage. Indeed, a user which is located with its terminal outside such an UMTS coverage area can only get access to the limited set of services or less advanced services provided by a service provider of a telecommunication system with a global coverage and is not able to access a richer set of services provided by an UMTS system.
An object of the present invention is to provide a service means of a telecommunication network such as the above known service providers but which has not the above described drawback, i.e. which is able to provide a service to a user of a first terminal of a telecommunication network which enables the user to get access to a richer set of services provided by an UMTS network.
According to the invention, this object is achieved by means of the service means described in claim 1, by the method of claim 8 realized by such a service means and by the telecommunication network of claim 9 including such a service means.
The invention is based on the insight that by providing to a user of a first terminal of a telecommunication network, location information concerning the location of a UMTS coverage area, the user is enabled to transport its first terminal to this UMTS coverage area where its first terminal is enabled to access the richer set of services e.g. a predefined universal mobile telecommunication service of a universal mobile telecommunication system.
Therefor, according to the invention a retrieving means, a first determining means and a forwarding means is included in the service provider.
The retrieving means is included to retrieve with a coverage area from a storing means a location information that is related to this coverage area. The storing means stores a plurality of relations between a coverage area of such a UMTS network and its respectively related location information. In the event when a user with its first terminal is located outside each coverage area of the plurality of coverage area""s and desires to use a predefined UMTS service, a location information which is associated to a coverage area is determined according to this storing means by the service means. In this way, the retrieving means retrieves one or more location information and provides it to the first determining means.
The first determining means that is coupled to the retrieving means selects, upon receiving of an initiation signal, out of one or more retrieved location informations a selected location information. This selection is based upon predefined rules.
The selected location information is provided to the forwarding means.
The forwarding means forwards the selected location information towards the user. In this way the user is enabled to transport its first terminal to the selected coverage area according to the selected location information. Indeed, the user might walk or drive to the provided selected location information. Once the first terminal is located inside the selected coverage area, the first terminal is enabled to access the predefined universal mobile telecommunication service.
It has to be explained that an initiation signal can be generated when a users wants to use a predefined UMTS service e.g. by selecting it on the display of its terminal and that the UMTS service is not available. Indeed, when the user is located in a location without coverage for this UMTS system, he can not reach this UMTS system. However, a service provider of a telecommunication network which provides coverage for the actual location of the user can give a reaction to this attempt by generating such an initiation signal an by initiating the service means according to the present invention and by executing the method of the invention.
It is clear to a person skilled in the art that the user must have permission to access the predefined universal mobile telecommunication service in order to receive this access once being located within the selected coverage area. The user must e.g. be subscribed to the predefined UMTS service or in the event when a GSM operator wants to promote its UMTS system he could provide the predefined UMTS service for free to its UMTS users.
A possible place to store the relations between the coverage area""s and the location information of the coverage area""s is at the network operator""s location. Indeed, it must be clear that location information of coverage area""s of an UMTS system can be subject to changes as long as the UMTS network is still in evolution. In such a case it can be preferred to store location information in a more centralized way, i.e. included in the network. In this way the service means is able to retrieve with its retrieving means the location information by e.g. transmitting a xe2x80x9crequest for informationxe2x80x9d signal to the network operator. The network operator returns upon receiving of such a signal the requested information to the service means.
Another possible implementation is that the storing means is included in the service means itself. This is described in claim 2. Such an implementation has the advantage that retrieving the location information can be executed faster since the network operator doesn""t need to be interrogated.
A further characteristic feature of the present invention becomes clear when the service means of the present invention is included in a service provider of the telecommunication network. According to this implementation the selected location information is forwarded towards the user by the forwarding means via the network and a second terminal. Therefor the forwarding means includes a generating means and a transmitting means. The generating means is coupled to the first determining means and includes the selected location information into a service message. This service message is transmitted by a transmitting means and via the telecommunication network to a receiver of the second terminal of the user. The second terminal receives the service message with the included selected location information by means of a receiver. Thereby the second terminal is enabled to generate an output by means of an output means towards the user that includes the selected location information. The output means is e.g. a display that displays the location information towards the user or a speaker that provides the location information by means of sound. This is described in claim 3. Such a second terminal of the user can be implemented by e.g. a general positioning system which is enabled to receive service messages of a service provider and which shows on a display towards the user the selected location information which includes e.g. a local part of a city map with a highlighted coverage area on it.
It has to be understood that a possible implementation of the service means according to the invention is that the first terminal which will be enabled by the method of the invention to receive the UMTS service is constituted by the second terminal whereto the service means transmits the service message. In this way the user only has to take care of one terminal. This is described in claim 4.
Another implementation of the service means is described in claim 5. The service means is included in a second terminal of the user and the forwarding means includes output means that are coupled to the first determining means. The output means generates directly an output towards the user that includes the selected location information. According to this implementation and in the event when e.g. the storing means is also included in the service means the retrieving means doesn""t need to generate a xe2x80x9crequest for informationxe2x80x9d anymore. Indeed, when the set of coverage area""s reached a more stable situation, it might be convenient that the service means includes the storing means and that the service means according to the invention is included in a second terminal. In this way, the location information stored in a terminal of the user might be subject to commercial advantage of the terminal.
Furthermore, when the second terminal of the previous paragraph is realized by the first terminal the user has all the needed information directly available on one single terminal which is also able to access the UMTS service once it is brought into the coverage area. This situation has the advantage that the user does not need to carry with him different terminals but only one. A possible implementation of the storing means of this service means is the service identity module SIM that is integrated on an IC card of the terminal. This is described in claim 6.
It has to be remarked that according to the previous described implementations of the invention, it is clear to a person skilled in the art that the location information could be provided in different kind of formats during the storing, retrieving, selecting and forwarding procedures. Indeed, the location information to be stored in a storing means e.g. a memory is preferable in a short format e.g. location coordinates referring to a city map in order to store all location information as economical as possible. Such a reference can refer to other kind of data bases which includes more detailed information about the location of the coverage area""s e.g. names of streets, longitude/latitude coordinates. In order to transmit service messages including location information the preferred format depends on the network and terminal capabilities. In the event when e.g. not much bandwidth is available, a rather short format will be preferred and the location information is e.g. provided in an encoded and encrypted format. On the other hand when e.g. an optical wideband network is used to transmit a service message to a second terminal of the user more location information data can be transmitted. Furthermore, the output of the terminal towards the user must be in an understandable format for the user and depends on the kind of output means used. The format of the location information is provided in an understandable way by displaying e.g. a street name of a city.
It has to be explained that a straight forward implementation of the predefined rules is e.g. with a predefined coverage area. In this way the retrieving means always retrieves, according to this predefined coverage area, the same location information that is forwarded to the user. All users will be guided to the same predefined coverage area. Such an implementation provides however not much flexibility.
Another implementation is described in claim 7. The service provider further includes second determining means to determine an actual first terminal location that is an actual location of the first terminal. The actual first terminal location is provided to the first determining means whereby the first determining means is further adapted to base its selection also upon the actual first terminal location. In this way, a selection out of the known available coverage area""s is made in relation to the actual location of the first terminal. The selection is furthermore based upon predefined rules such as e.g. xe2x80x9cthe coverage area that is located the closest to the actual first terminal locationxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cthe coverage area that is located the closest to the actual first terminal location and that is the easiest to reach by feetxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cthe coverage area that is to be reached in the most fastest way by e.g. car and by taking into account the actual local traffic at that timexe2x80x9d. In this way it is clear to a person skilled in the art that the selected location information includes more information than the identification of the selected coverage area as such. Even more, the selected location information can include a limited set of location informations being associated to a limited set of coverage area""s which enables the user to make its own selection according to its preferences. Even more, the content of a storing means according to the invention might include location information of coverage area""s that belong to different UMTS networks which belong e.g. to different operators. An indication of the operator could be provided together with the location information for selecting on of e.g. overlapping coverage area""s of different operators.
It has to be explained that similar to the storing means also the selection of the location information can be executed by the network operator. According to this implementation the second determining means is e.g. also included by the network operator in order to know the actual location of the first terminal. The predefined rule of the first determining means is e.g. xe2x80x9cclosest coverage areaxe2x80x9d whereby the retrieving means retrieves location information according to the xe2x80x9cclosest coverage areaxe2x80x9d. The network operator determines with the available actual first terminal location and the location information of the coverage area stored in its memory, the closest coverage area to the first terminal and provides to the retrieving means the associated location information. This location information is forwarded to the user by the service means.
As already mentioned above, the telecommunication network via which a service message is provided to a second terminal can be implemented by different kind of networks. It should be convenient for an operator being the owner of a GSM network and also of an UMTS network, to provide via its GSM network a service according to the present invention and to offer in this way access to its UMTS network. This is described in claim 10. However, providing the service of the present invention via a fixed network might have other kind of advantages such as the available bandwidth, as already mentioned above.
It should be noticed that the term xe2x80x9cincludingxe2x80x9d used in the claims, should not be interpreted as being limitative to the means listed thereafter. Thus, the scope of the expression xe2x80x9ca device including means A and Bxe2x80x9d should not be limited to devices consisting only of components A and B. It means that with respect to the present invention, the only relevant components of the device are A and B.
Similarly, it is to be noted that the xe2x80x9ccoupledxe2x80x9d, also used in the claims, should not be interpreted as being limitative to direct connections only. Thus, the scope of the expression xe2x80x9ca device A coupled to a device Bxe2x80x9d should not be limited to devices or systems wherein an output of the device A is directly connected to an input of device B. It means that there exists a path between an output A and an input B which may,be a path including other devices or means.